The Scarlet Letter
Key Reading Points
Chapters 7-9
Ch. 7: Pg. 119
There was fire in her and throughout her; she seemed the
unpremeditated offshoot of a passionate moment. Her mother,
in contriving the child’s garb, had allowed the gorgeous
tendencies of her imagination their full play; arraying her in a
crimson velvet tunic, of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered
in fantasies and flourishes of gold thread….
It was the scarlet letter in another form; the scarlet letter
endowed with life! The mother herself—as if the red ignominy
were so deeply scorched into her brain, that all her conceptions
assumed its form—had carefully wrought out the similitude;
lavishing many hours of morbid ingenuity, to create an analogy
between the object of her affection, and the emblem of her
guilt and torture.
Can you . . .
• 1) Paraphrase Hawthorne’s words on pg.
119?
• 2) Make any connections with
Transcendentalist philosophy?
• 3) Examine what we are seeing here with
Hester? Pearl?
Emergence of a Motif
Ch. 7 - Pg. 121
• “No, my little Pearl!” said her mother. “Thou
must gather thine own sunshine. I have none
to give thee!”
Light/Dark imagery abounds in The Scarlet
Letter. What are the implications of this
statement Hester makes about sun? Can you
infer how Hawthorne will use Light/Dark
imagery going forward?
Ch. 8- Pg. 128
• “…in close companionship with him, old Roger Chillingworth,
a person of great skill in physic, who, for two or three years,
past had been settled in the town. It was understood that
this learned man was the physician as well as friend of the
young minister, whose health had severely suffered, of late,
by his too unreserved self-sacrifice to the labors and duties
of the pastoral relation.”
• We should be able to make some inferences from this
interesting set of details. What do you make of this passage?
Ch. 8- Pg. 132
“Old Roger Chillingworth”
• “Hester Prynne looked at the man of skill, and even then,
with her fate hanging in the balance, was startled to
perceive what a change had come over his features,—how
much uglier they were,—how his dark complexion seemed to
have grown duskier, and his figure more misshapen,—since
the days when she had familiarly known him. She met his
eyes for an instant, but was immediately constrained to give
all her attention to the scene now going forward.”
• What is happening to Chillingworth? (Level 1)
• What insight in to mankind is Hawthorne evincing? (Level 2)
• READ CLOSELY WHENEVER YOU ARE PRESENTED WITH
DETAILS OF CHILLINGWORTH’S ACTIONS, WORDS, or
APPEARANCE.
Ch. 8 – Pg. 135
• “You speak, my friend, with a strange
earnestness,” said old Roger Chillingworth,
smiling at him.”
• Your thoughts???
Chapter 9 – The Leech
Pg. 140
• “Unknown to all but Hester Prynne, and possessing the lock and key of
her silence, he chose to withdraw his name from the roll of mankind,
and, as regarded his former ties and interest, to vanish out of life as
completely as if he indeed lay at the bottom of the ocean, whither rumor
had long ago consigned him. This purpose once effected, new interests
would immediately spring up, and likewise a new purpose; dark, it is
true, if not guilty, but of force enough to engage the full strength of his
faculties.”
• Explicate this passage. Infer what Chillingworth’s role is becoming both
in terms of plot and theme.
Ch. 9- Pg. 142
Dimmesdale in decay
• “His form grew emaciated; his voice, though still
rich and sweet, had a certain melancholy prophecy
of decay in it; he was often observed, on any slight
alarm or other sudden accident, to put his hand
over his heart, with first a flush and then a
paleness, indicative of pain.”
• Read and think deeply here. Explicate the details of
this passage.
Ch. 9 – Pg. 146
• “He deemed it essential, it would seem, to know the man, before
attempting to do him good. Wherever there is a heart and an
intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the
peculiarities of these. In Arthur Dimmesdale, thought and
imagination were so active, and sensibility so intense, that the
bodily infirmity would be likely to have its groundwork there. So
Roger Chillingworth—the man of skill, the kind and friendly
physician—strove to go deep into his patient’s bosom, delving
among his principles, prying into his recollections, and probing
every thing with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a dark
cavern. Few secrets can escape an investigator, who has
opportunity and license to undertake such a quest, and skill to
follow it up. A man burdened with a secret should especially avoid
the intimacy of his physician. “
• Hawthorne is pretty clear here – what is going on?